“Why, of course,” I replied, “Pelleas was always Pelleas.”
“So he was,” Miss Willie assented and was silent for a little; and then, without warning:—
“Etarre, I mean this,” she said, speaking rapidly and not meeting my eyes. “When I was twenty I met a boy a little older than I, and I had known him only a few months when he went abroad to join his father. Before he went—he told me that he loved me—” it was like seeing jonquils bloom in snow to hear Miss Willie say this—“and I know that I loved him. But I did not go with him—he wanted me to go and I did not go with him—for stupid reasons. He was killed on a mountain in Switzerland. And I wonder and wonder—you see that was fifty years ago,” said Miss Willie, “but I wonder....”
I sat up very straight, hardly daring to look at her. All you young people who talk with such pretty concern of love, do you know what it will be when you are seventy to come suddenly on one of these flowers, still fresh, which you toss about you now?
“Since he died loving you and you have loved him all these years,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “never tell me that you will not be each other’s—afterward.”
And at least no one need gainsay this who is not prepared to prove the contrary.
“But where—where?” cried Miss Willie, poor little Miss Willie, echoing the cry of every one in the world. It was very strange to see this little vial of spiced cordial wondering about the immortality of love.
“I don’t know where or how,” I said, “but believe it and you’ll see.”
Ah, how I reproached myself later to think that I could have said no more than that. Many a fine response that I might have made I compounded afterward, all about love that is infinite and eternal so that it fills the universe and one cannot get beyond it, and so on, in long phrases; but there in that box not one other word could I say. And yet when one thinks of it what is there to say when one is asked about this save simply: “I don’t know how or where, but believe it and you’ll see.”
We said little else, and I sat there with all that company of blue and pink waists dancing about me through a mist in a fashion that would have astonished them. So much for Miss Willie as an instance in my forthcoming argument with Pelleas about every one in the world loving some one. Miss Willie had gone over to his side of the case outright. I began to doubt that there would be an argument. Still, there would always be Hobart Eddy, inalienably on my side and serenely loving every one alike. And there would always be Nichola, loving nobody. If all the world fell in love and went quite mad, there would yet be Nichola fluting her “Yah!” to any such fancy.